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Page added on September 19, 2011
Forget Tar Sands: Canada’s Geothermal Resources >1 Million Times Electricity Consumption
Cleantechnica has a post on a recent report on geothermal power in Canada – Forget Tar Sands: Canada’s Geothermal Resources >1 Million Times Electricity Consumption.
Canada’s sitting on “massive” geothermal resources, according to news reports, more than 1 million times its current electricity consumption. “As few as 100 projects could meet Canada’s energy needs,” notes the Geological Survey of Canada research team whose 322-page report will be presented at a geothermal industry conference in Toronto Thursday, Sept. 15.
Better yet, the 12-scientist team found that geothermal heat reservoirs found across “large swaths of British Columbia, Alberta, the Yukon and Northwest Territories” lie close to the surface, making them easier to reach and tap into.
The research team estimates that there are at least 5 gigawatts (GW) of geothermal power available in British Columbia, Alberta and the Yukon alone. British Columbia has so much that it could produce as much electricity as the controversial $7.9-billion, 1,100 megawatt Site C hydroelectric dam the provincial government has proposed, according to the research team’s findings.
While the geothermal resources in these areas hold the greatest potential to be developed commercially, such opportunities exist across the country, the researchers say.
6 Comments on "Forget Tar Sands: Canada’s Geothermal Resources >1 Million Times Electricity Consumption"
Johny K. on Mon, 19th Sep 2011 12:25 pm
So, why nobody has developed them yet? Sounds a little bit unbelievable…
Kenz300 on Mon, 19th Sep 2011 4:53 pm
Wind, solar, wave energy, geothermal and second generation biofuels made from algae, cellulose and waste are the future.
It is time to end our addiction to oil.
The increase in oil use by China and India keeps growing every year. This demand will soon outpace the worlds ability to supply and increase the price for all. Our economic security and national security will depend on our transition to alternative fuels. Geothermal can become one part of a diverse energy system. The time to transition is before we get a huge economic shock caused by high oil prices.
KM on Mon, 19th Sep 2011 8:01 pm
This is nonsense. 1,000,000 X current usage and BC, Alberta, and Yukon alone have 5 gigawatts? 5 gigawatts isn’t nothing, but it’s a fraction of current production.
MrEnergyCzar on Mon, 19th Sep 2011 9:11 pm
We built a society that runs on liquid transport fuels not electricity……
MreEnergyCzar
DC on Tue, 20th Sep 2011 5:25 am
Geo-therm may be a good idea, and even a viable one, but people keep mis-understanding a simple fact. Fossil-fuel use and provision is not about ‘meeting’ peoples energy needs, its about profit, and control. If the goal was to make ourselves self-sufficent or ‘free of fossil-fuels’ we could have done that long ago, had we cared to make the effort. There are many routes we could have take to accomplish that goal. But things like solar, wind and geo-thermal, would not allow things like the brutal US military to exist(at least nowhere near the scale it is now), nor would such a power system allow FF corporations to essentially own lock stock and barrel, pretty much every politication in the western, and eastern world for that matter.
Fossil-fuels are about dependency and control. Green energy would tend to subvert the control the FF has over us, so even if we do have all the geo-potential this aricle states, guys like Harper and his party dont care. It could be a billion times usages and he would just say, ‘neat’. Then sign a bill for more subsidies for suncors tar-sands operations.
That unfortunately, is how the world ‘works’.
Harquebus on Tue, 20th Sep 2011 9:07 pm
From releasing millions of years of solar energy we move to releasing billions of years of geothermal. It is the law of unintended consequences that bothers me.